News

Michael Bay Visits Harvard’s Graduate School of Design

Posted
on Nov 24, 2013

Nelson here…

On a cold and rainy Friday November morning, Michael Bay and Architect Chad Oppenheim visited the Harvard University Graduate School Of Design in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Oppenheim began by introducing himself and thanking Harvard for the invitation. He then proceeded to introduce Michael Bay to a packed house. Speaking to students and staff, Bay began by recounting his childhood, academic life, and his professional career. Along the first half of the three-hour engagement Bay showed some video clips of his work, artwork and design of the Transformers movies, and some behind the scenes of ‘Pearl Harbor’. Afterwards he took a few questions from the audience.

In the second half, Oppenheim spoke about his involvement in the design and legal challenges in designing and building Bay’s Bel Air home while Bay added very colorful commentary here and there. One of the things many things that got the students undivided attention was a video demo the software Oppenheim used to show visualizations of the house. It was software based on video game engines which allow the user to walk through the house like you would in a video game. Bay urged staff and students to improve their pre-visualization software. Finally, the last twenty minutes were taken up by a barrage of questions from the audience.

Before leaving, Bay chatted with students, signed autographs, posed for pictures with students and was given a tour of Gund Hall.